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CHINA and other Asian countries could end up at war over territorial disputes if governments keep up their “provocative behaviour”, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has said.

Speaking to reporters before arriving in Tokyo on a trip to Asia, Mr Panetta appealed for restraint amid mounting tensions over territorial rights in the East China Sea and the South China Sea.

“I am concerned that when these countries engage in provocations of one kind or another over these various islands, that it raises the possibility that a misjudgment on one side or the other could result in violence, and could result in conflict,” Mr Panetta said, when asked about a clash between Japan and China.

“And that conflict would then have the potential of expanding.”

The Pentagon chief’s trip coincides with an escalating row between Asia’s two largest economies over an archipelago in the East China Sea administered by Tokyo under the name Senkaku and claimed by China under the name Diaoyu.

Tensions have steadily mounted since pro-Beijing activists were arrested and deported after landing on one of the islands in August. Japanese nationalists then followed, raising their flag on the same island days later.

On Tuesday, Japan announced it had nationalised three of the islands in the chain, triggering protests in China. Tokyo already owns another and leases the fifth.

The uninhabited islands are in important sea lanes and the seabed nearby is thought to harbour valuable mineral resources.

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Major electronics firms Panasonic and Canon have temporarily suspended production at factories in China after a territorial dispute over a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea triggered violent anti-Japanese protests.

Sites linked to auto manufacturers Toyota and Honda have also been attacked in the unrest, which has forced frightened expatriates into hiding and sent relations between Asia’s two biggest economies into crisis.

Ratcheting up tensions further on Monday, Chinese state media warned Japan it could suffer another “lost decade” if trade ties soured. Japan counted China as its top trade partner last year, with total two-way trade of more than $340 billion.

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If a large number of Chinese vessels intrude into Japanese territorial waters around the Japanese-controlled islands in the East China Sea, it could trigger unexpected incidents such as clashes with Japan Coast Guard patrol ships, further escalating tensions between the two countries.

The radio station said in an online edition that Chinese fisheries authorities will monitor the fishing boats' activities near the uninhabited islets, which Beijing calls Diaoyu, via a marine observation satellite.

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Lord Wellington depicted the allied triumph at Waterloo as "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life." Wellington's verdict would describe the likely outcome should Chinese and Japanese forces meet in battle over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, or elsewhere off the Northeast Asian seaboard. Such a fight appeared farfetched before 2010, when Japan's Coast Guard apprehended Chinese fishermen who rammed one of its vessels off the disputed islands, but it appears more likely now. After Japan detained and deported Chinese activists who landed on the disputed islands in mid-August, a hawkish Chinese major general, Luo Yuan, called on China to dispatch 100 boats to defend the Diaoyus. In an op-ed published Aug. 20, the nationalistic Chinese broadsheet Global Times warned, "Japan will pay a price for its actions ... and the result will be far worse than they anticipated."

This is more than mere posturing. In July, China's East Sea Fleet conducted an exercise simulating an amphibious assault on the islands. China's leaders are clearly thinking about the unthinkable. And with protesters taking to the streets to smash Japanese cars and attack sushi restaurants, their people may be behind them. So who would win the unlikely prospect of a clash of titans in the Pacific: China or Japan?

Despite Japan's latter-day image as a military pushover, a naval war would not be a rout for China. While the Japanese postwar "peace" constitution "forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes," the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) has accumulated several pockets of material excellence, such as undersea warfare, since World War II. And Japanese mariners are renowned for their professionalism. If commanders manage their human, material, and geographic advantages artfully, Tokyo could make a maritime war with China a close-run thing -- and perhaps even prevail.

Past naval wars between the two rivals set the stage for today's island controversy. During the Sino-Japanese War...

* Japan has the most powerful navy in Asia after the United States. The Maritime Self-Defense Force has 16 submarines, 170 combat aircraft and 50 destroyers, including four Kongo-class Aegis destroyers, and a 600-foot, 13,500-ton helicopter carrier. The government is discussing buying assault ships with decks for launching helicopters and Harrier jump jets.

* Japan has a fleet of wooden minesweepers, made of wood so magnetic underwater mines will not react to them. They have been deployed in the Persian Gulf to remove mines planted there in the Gulf War. Japan has 760,000 stored mines, compared to 11 million in the United States.

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Jin Baisong from the Chinese Academy of International Trade – a branch of the commerce ministry – said China should use its power as Japan’s biggest creditor with $230bn (£141bn) of bonds to “impose sanctions on Japan in the most effective manner” and bring Tokyo’s festering fiscal crisis to a head.

Writing in the Communist Party newspaper China Daily, Mr Jin called on China to invoke the “security exception” rule under the World Trade Organisation to punish Japan, rejecting arguments that a trade war between the two Pacific giants would be mutually destructive.

Separately, the Hong Kong Economic Journal reported that China is drawing up plans to cut off Japan’s supplies of rare earth metals needed for hi-tech industry.

The warnings came as anti-Japanese protests spread to 85 cities across China, forcing Japanese companies to shutter factories and suspend operations.

Fitch Ratings threatened to downgrade a clutch of Japanese exporters if the clash drags on. It warned that Nissan is heavily at risk with 26p of its global car sales in China, followed by Honda with 20pc. Sharp and Panasonic both have major exposure. Japan’s exports to China were $74bn in the first half of this year. Bilateral trade reached $345bn last year.

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China’s most powerful military leader, in an unusual public statement, last week ordered military forces to prepare for combat, as Chinese warships deployed to waters near disputed islands and anti-Japan protests throughout the country turned violent.

Protests against the Japanese government’s purchase of three privately held islands in the Senkakus chain led to mass street protests, the burning of Japanese flags, and attacks on Japanese businesses and cars in several cities. Some carried signs that read “Kill all Japanese,” and “Fight to the Death” over disputed islands. One sign urged China to threaten a nuclear strike against Japan. http://freebeacon.com/chinese-general-prepare-for-combat/

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Alaska’s fleet of F-22 fighter jets and their elite pilots have been deployed to an airbase in the Pacific U.S. territory of Guam, according to officials at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage. The deployment has been planned for some time, but happens to coincide with a period of escalating tension in the Pacific Theater, as Japan and China dispute who has the rights to a set of uninhabited, resource-rich islands.

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Fishing boat armada? Check; Threat to dump JGBs? Check; One thing was missing, and that was cyberwarfare, aka #OccupyJapaneseServers. That too has now been checked. Globe and Mail reports that at least 19 Japanese websites, including those of a government ministry, courts and a hospital, have come under cyber attack, apparently from China, police said Wednesday. Many of the websites were altered to show messages proclaiming Chinese sovereignty over the Diaoyu islands, a Japanese-administered chain Tokyo calls Senkaku, the National Police Agency (NPA) said in a statement. The NPA has confirmed that about 300 Japanese organisations were listed as potential targets for cyber attack on the message board of Honker Union, a Chinese “hacktivism” group, it said.

More:

The police also confirmed around 4,000 people had posted messages about planned attacks and schemes on China’s leading chat site “YY Chat”, it said.

The targeted sites include those of the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry and Tohoku University Hospital, police said.

The website of the ministry’s statistics bureau seemed to have come under a “distributed denial of service (DDoS)” attack, where huge volumes of data are sent in a short period to paralyze the targeted server, Kyodo News said.

On Sunday afternoon, when the attack was most intense, 95 per cent of traffic to the bureau’s website was from China, Kyodo said, citing minister Tatsuo Kawabata.

Obviously, for now all the “warfare” is purely in the prank department, and while threats of a bond war are serious, they are just that: threats. Expect to see Tim Geithner flying to China and/or Japan to explain that the situation really should be diffused asap, and certainly before the first week of November, because any undue stress may impair his chances of that much desired windowless cubicle at Goldman Sachs or [insert any other bailed out bank here] once his reign of Treasury Terror finally comes to a close.